Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

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Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

Walking to reverse CBD is the equivalent of claiming eating kale cured stage IV pancreatic cancer.

Utter codswallop and incredibly dangerous and damaging, selfish and cruel.

My gods, yes its awful 🫢

I agree. And someone above even suggested that anyone who disagrees is probably being paid for it! As if others can not have a genuinely different opinion.

There's something of a witch hunt going on especially as the author is a woman. I just can't see a man being subjected to this degree of righteous anger. Motivations and actions aren't as straightforward as this discussion seems to suggest.

I just find it really shitty, personally, that they have made so much money out of telling lies. That’s the long and short of it for me.

@HumbleWarrior echoes my feelings perfectly in their post from 22:07pm today on this thread.

And I find it shitty as well that RW apparently:

• charged money to promote her books at charity events
• wrote to the Big Issue to ask if she could write an article for them about her experience of homelessness (when she made herself homeless when her house was repossessed after she couldn’t repay the loan she took out to repay the money she had taken from a former employer) and got paid for that article
• stole from campsites that she and Moth stayed at.

I might sound really judgemental and smug, but that’s really shit behaviour. Yet she seems to justify it either by saying she had no alternative option as she was homeless, or she passes it off as sort of whimsical, manic pixie dream girl behaviour. It’s just shitty. That’s what it is.

But he slags of the legal profession more than once when the reality is they did what they are meant to do. That is take possession of security for creditors over an unpaid loan. It's sold as an injustice which is not the truth.
Alot of people are criticised by the entitled author of the book. From housing departments, judges who saw evidence as 'only a piece of paper', rural communities who she thinks judge people in public housing. The list is long. This review perpetuates this but doesn't actually review the book does it. It continues a narrative.

Other thoughts having read the letters:

1. the 2015 letter and the 2019 letter both express doubts. He evidently has something neurological but it sounds like they are not really sure how to diagnose it and reach for that diagnosis as closest that they can get to but a very bad fit (happily for him as the prognosis is much better).

2. the February 2025 letter is just weird. Why would they have any queries arising out of release of a film that a consultant neurologist would answer? Why is he wanging on in a clinical update letter of the sort that would be sent to a GP about their charity work and carefully emphasising that they have not said this or that about the effects of exercise on his condition (especially since I understand the whole premise of the books to be that it does improve his condition)?

Though admittedly it would be quite funny if she had fabricated the whole alcoholic, drug-using, out of control, London party girl past, and had actually spent that entire period running a tea shop in the Cotswolds and living like a nun.😀

it’s nothing to do with her being a woman🙄

I dislike it because I know that when you think you have reached rock bottom, the reality is that it can get a lot worse.

I am more familiar with cancer than neurological conditions, but illness is sometimes just awful and traumatic.

I’m not suggesting he be investigated. I’m just surprised that he seems so detached from the reality of what patients may be experiencing. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism?

Moth is complicit through his silence. Just as guilty. He knew all along what she was writing was not honest or true.

If you are a member of your local library, sign up for on line access (ie borrowbox or Libby) and you can access newspapers and magazines for free.

If you smelt a rat on The Salt Path then Olivia Lang's book The Garden Against Time has the same stench.

In the early 1990s, Moth made an investment in Cooper’s property portfolio

Wait this is the Moth who was an eco activist?

Agree, that 2025 letter is very strange.

Your post makes it clear you and your loved ones have not been diagnosed with a condition similar to the one claimed in the books

No it doesn't. You've made an assumption based on your own feelings, one which shows a lack of objectivity.

Neurodegenerative conditions of the same family as CBD/CBS run in my family, but that won't influence anyone's opinion because so many are wedded to this trial-by-social-media.

From the 2015 letter…
His symptoms began 9 or 10 years ago. So almost 20 years ago now.
He first went to a surgery in 2009.
He managed to keep working ‘while contending with his symptoms until a couple of years ago’.

So he had to stop working in 2013 because of his symptoms? Or because he was now homeless and they decided to walk the Salt Path rather than take a council house?

The letter also says his MRI in 2011 - like all other tests - was negative. The dr is doing a repeat MRI and ‘will write when he has the results’. But no scan results have been shared with us - presumably they don’t evidence anything of note. Except the book says they do!

What can I say - he’s a complex character!

Whether or not you stole £64k is pretty straightforward.

Whether or not you can claim to be homeless when you own a house in France is pretty straightforward.

Whether or not a brain scan showed deterioration then a later brain scan showed the deterioration had disappeared, apparently due to you going on a long walk, is pretty straightforward.

Exactly @CHoux

I guess it makes sense, kind of like writing about homelessness for the big issue while owning a house in france

Ah that’s really interesting. She’s been getting on my nerves for years, and I’ve never quite pinned down why. She writes exactly the kind of books I ought to love, and yet they rub me up the wrong way.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Whether or not you can claim to have a terminal diagnosis made in 2013 when you had a vague 'possible' diagnosis made in 2015 is also fairly straightforward.

Oh really? That wouldn’t be so surprising because I think her thing is kind of semi- fictionalised/blurred lines life writing.

Agreed. In fact, most of the fabricated memoirs that have been back in the news this week because of this have been written by men (e.g. James Frey, Herman Rosenblat, Ryszard Kapuściński, the man who forged the Hitler Diaries..) The only woman I can think of in that list is Misha Defonseca.